JDMcDsblog

Spent the day in Motherwell Civic Centre at a Tapestry Conference., led by Michael O’Neill and Keir Bloomer. I had not been to a a Tapestry event before, so I was glad of the opportunity, although, Novemebr always seems a particularly hard time to be out of school.
The day got off to an excellent start with two musical items by the North Lanarkshire chorus. Michael gave a thoughful keynote on the characteristics of a leader; in many ways he confirmed what I have always held, namely the importance of relationships. Qualities like enthusiasm, a desire to question established norms, (”Why don’t we? What if..?)carrying out “little random acts of kindness, turning up to support the debating team and, in Tom Peters phrase, catching people doing things well” really chimed with me. In our group, made up of 3 secondary and 1 primary heads, 2 deputes and a teacher of ICT we were able to share our experiences, going “off message” at times in terms of the workshop activity, but looking at why we had come into teaching. the consensus that emerged was a desire to make a difference, to encourage young people to see the potential in their lives, to effect change.

Keir looked at some broad themes, citing research and synthesinsingb recent thinking on effective schools and in particular attempts to raise attainment, improve perforamce. He quoted Prof Hattie of Auckland University, who in his paper “influences on Student Learning” analysised a vast amount of data on school performance and concluded that the key factor that affected performance above all else was

Setting challenging goals and giving effective feedback.

This, of course, is linked to the work by Professors Black and William at King’s London , on formative assessment. Indeed, school improvement is absolutely dependent on effective classroom improvement-we heard the oft repeated point, that if it is not happening in the classoom, it is not happening.

We were tasked, in our groups, with comimg up with a set of priorities for the next 5 years in our school, and how these could actually be implemented. Pooling our thoughts we came up with:

Increased collaboration, particularly at S1 to S3
Instill sense of community and idea of service
send out pupils able to learn on their own, self reliant and not spoonfed
embded international education within curriculum

I came away reassured by much of what I had heard. I though both speakers had much to offer in terms of wisdom and experience at the higherst levels of Scottish education. I appreciated, too, the chance to work alongside some intersting and verfy friendly colleagues whom I had never met before. The main things I’ll take away are;

Importance of recognising, charting and celebrating achievement
Catch people doing something good
Challenge assumptions, Question, envision-ask the hypothetical question
Set goals and give feedback-always-if you want to raise the game
Enthuse and support, be seen around the school
Have a life!
Have courage and independence of mind.

I came across some interesting words on school reform when looking up something on the philosopher Karl Popper:

“School reform must be the result of centuries of research done by first rate thinkers and should have respect for the practical needs of the time..there must be a complete transformation, but it must not be done at once; it should be gradual, continual and coherent in order to conserve what is valid. Its objective should be to turn out (men ) who are brave, just, morally sound and eager to work. Children should study and practice joyfully..The new education discovers the child, discovers the parent and discovers the teacher. One must make use of the child’s abilities and relate to his experiences..”

These were the thoughts of the Austrian educator Otto Glockel, writing in 1923. He continued,

“in the first five years teaching is not broken up, but constitutes a logical whole” and he believed that the principle objective of school is not the drilling of facts but the acquistion of notions and knowledge, so that a student will know what to do when he needs to find out something new.. pupils should be exposed to stimulating writing by authors like Schiller, Goethe, Raimund and Schonheer.”

(adated from Popper’s Vienna, by Dario Antiseri)

I find it illuminating that such thinking, with an apparently child centred focus on learning and a curriculum architecture that recognises the interrelationship of subjects, not dissimilar to our Curriculum for Excellence were being considered in post Hapsburg Austria and doubtless in other European countries, too. For a historian of education, such books as the one mentioned above make fascinating reading; I would love to have the time and the capacity to explore the changing approaches to education in European education, particularly comparing our own Scottish system with a country like Germany where I used to work.

I have been enjoying the latest long distance journey by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman-”The Long way Down”. In this series the guys are motorcycling from John O Groats to Cape Town and the Sunday night series folllows their adventures as they negotiate mud, heavy rain, sand storms and relentless beauracracy at border crossings. As with all epic jouneys there is excitement and tedium, lmoments of great excitement, ong hours on the road, and a desparate rush to get through each place on time, to maintain a busy schedule. At times, it seems like they are trying to do too much and I fdo eel the whole series is somehow more frenetic than the first voyage “The Long way Round” in wjch they travelled east from London through Europe, Asia and on to America, ending up in New York/.

As geograhical transects go their journey takes some beating, however, as the slice throiugh the continent of Africa with its deserts, highlands, grassland and jungle. The diversity of landscape and people is well captured and often we get glimspes of the everyday life of the people Ewan and Cahrley encounter. The entire route has been posted as a blog, complete with map and photosn telling us about their thoughts and expreriences. It is an excellent example, too, of ian ntegrated approach to programming-there is the TV broadcast, the website, blog and accompanying book.
I find them both very engaging and likeable, and the series is well worth watching for the combination of stunning scenery, the good humour and honesty with which they approach each situation and for keeping alive the idea that there is a big world out there worth seeing.

Useful links

BBC Guide to Africa
Africa Guide
National Geographic articles on Africa

Today, at Hutchesons’, we had the annual Sir Alexander Stone lecture, delivered by renowned art historian Profesor Anthony Slinn, a graduate of Liverpool College of Art and the Slade School. Taking the theme of “masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” Professor Slinn examind ten key works of art, one from each decade of the 20th Century. Or nearly. Two decades were barren, for very different reasons-the Forties, exhuasted by war, and the sterlile minimalism of the 70s. But among the icons he picked were some familiar works such as Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, harbinger of cubism and Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle, a celebration of movement. Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral represented the 50s, while Liechstenstein’s Wham is the essence of 1960s Pop Art, up there with the celebrated Peter Blake cover for Sergeant Pepper. Slinn managed to incorporate some of his own work into the talk, such as his homage to Vincent’s Chair and a house made of individually framed pictures.

Sir Alexander Stone, son of Russian emigres, was born in the Gorbals and, after attending Hutchesons’ he joined the family furniture business before studying law and founding his own law firm and then embarked on a career in banking. A banking crisis led to Sir Alexander losing a personal fortune, but he built it up again, donating money for charities and supporting a wide range of philanthropic endeavours. For many years he supported the work of Hutchesons’, grateful for the education he received in the 1920s, and his wife has continued this tradition through her funding of the Music suite and the new John R Clark window in the Library.

Spent the day at Stewarts’ Melville College attending a presentation for independent schools by WCBS on their management information system, PASS. WBCS have largely served the English market but are now looking at opportunities to work here in Scotland. Until now the main issue has been achieving compatability with the SQA, but they believe that if a critical mass of independents buy into their system, it could be cost effective to offer a Scottish version of their product. A significant number of Scottish schools do use WBCS’ financial package , but for all other admin and academic purposes, Seemis (Click and Go) and Phoenix Gold seem the most common. Others are moving to Phoenix e1 I listened with interest and was impressed by the presentation and the potential of their system. They offer various elements:

Academic
Administration
School Development

Among the interesting features which I noted and want to follow up included:

Able to customise the package to suit the school

Flexibility in creating fields
Attendance and medical data
Use of alerts to flag up missing data
Ability to create a dynamic timetable that could be readly updated, eg to incorporate extra curricular activities
Tracking of uptake from initial inquiry through to formal application (gives Development Office hard data on conversion rates for pupil registations)
Tracking of pupil performance (”cradle to grave” analogy; ie from initial registration to university acceptance)
Ability to interrogate data to get overview on individual pupil performance (eg for a guidance teacher who needs a quick update ahead of a parental interview)
Logging of House Points, detentions, internet access restrictions
Variety of reporting options in terms of frequency and format-ranging from termly summaries to online marks books.
possible option of On Line reporting (using password protected access)
Generate Log to show staff progress in report completion
Text for reports can be entered via Word; spellcheck is built into PASS
Teachers can have remote access to system
Variable access to data-permissions depend on position/responsibility.
Easy migration of data to Excel

I’d be interested to know how WCBS, Phoenix and Seemis compare-what are their relative strengths and weaknesses?
How can parents access reports-and other key data about their child-online?

Just watching an interesting edition of BBC’s “Imagine” on typography, celebrating 50 years of Helvetica. The programme looks at how this “ultimate typeface” became the most popular in the word, arguably equalled but never bettered as a design artefact. Indeed the Museum of Modern Art, in New York devoted an exhibition to it this year. I find the aesthetics of typeface fascinating-the dropdown menu of various fonts on any Word processing package has made us aware of the sheer variety of typefaces available, often with Romantic, quasi poetic names like Verdana, Ariel, Tahoma and Garamond. bUt of course typesetting-and selecting apt, memorable names, goes back well before computers and the new generation of electronic fonts.

People react and respond to typefaces in different ways and letter styles can affect customer attitudes and expectations- a clean, sharp type face will reassure customers about the quality of a product; Gothic or Old English conveys antiquity and medievalism; while Broadway shouts, well, Broadway and Showbiz. Comic Sans is chatty, light hearted and friendly.Perhaps one of the most iconic typefaces is Johnson Sans, the one designed by Edward Johnstone and adopted by London Underground.

The programme looks at how the design of typography has changed over the last 50 years-some designers argue that typeface can be subversive, sending out subliminal and overt messages. Recently there has been a growth in Grunge type, reacting against the perceived uniformity, globalisation and standardisiation of clean cut Helvetica. In fact some commentators feel that Helvetica, the typeface of choice of major companies, is an expression of capitalism, although others argued it has is a democratic tool, made more widely available by PCs and the internet.